Cristiana de Marchi

The series of the white maps addresses issues of identity, belonging and transitions between territories by visually neutralizing, without denying, the borders separating single countries.
By breaking the representation of the planisphere into a series of fragments that prove not be recomposable into the same frame from which they were extrapolated, I question the fixity of boundary tracing, regional definitions, and political, economical and cultural modes of colonization, and introduce an element of destabilization and margins of freedom into a generally accepted visualization of the world.

Cristiana de Marchi

Possible worlds is a work about Utopias, where each one of the seven colors represents a possibility and its negation, starting with the golden age of literary memory. Each one of the seven worlds is paired by its corresponding negative. By reproducing the space occupied by the sea, the earth becomes a negative stance, a presence depicted in absence. The Seven Seas equally refer to a mythology of exhaustiveness, where the symbology of the number applies to the water element to define the totality of spaces, and the infinite possibilities of their exploration.

Cristiana de Marchi

The die is cast is a work that reflects on issues of identity from a perspective of potentiality and actualization.
By blindly engraving on seven white dices the 42 elements that characterize identity according to international standards and including gender, age, social and political status, religion and geographic origin, I address the component of irrationality in defining one’s identity, knowing that identity is a highly abused concept in the context of political and cultural inclusion, and exclusion.
The video The die is cast (2016) shows a series of hands, each one defined in its uniqueness, pictured in the act of throwing the identity dices. The repetition of the action and the differentiation in the physical nature of the portrayed hands, besides the contradiction that might be generated by the contrast between the elements that one could deduce through a simple observation of the individual physical characters and the outcome of the throwing, activates a reflection about the different components in one’s identity and an interrogation about the inter-exchangeable nature of human destinies.

Cristiana de Marchi

The die is cast is a work that reflects on issues of identity from a perspective of potentiality and actualization.
By blindly engraving on seven white dices the 42 elements that characterize identity according to international standards and including gender, age, social and political status, religion and geographic origin, I address the component of irrationality in defining one’s identity, knowing that identity is a highly abused concept in the context of political and cultural inclusion, and exclusion.
The video The die is cast (2016) shows a series of hands, each one defined in its uniqueness, pictured in the act of throwing the identity dices. The repetition of the action and the differentiation in the physical nature of the portrayed hands, besides the contradiction that might be generated by the contrast between the elements that one could deduce through a simple observation of the individual physical characters and the outcome of the throwing, activates a reflection about the different components in one’s identity and an interrogation about the inter-exchangeable nature of human destinies.

Cristiana de Marchi

The sky is a space for contemplation, the sky is a space for metaphoric thought as constellations reflect and embody an ordered organization of the cosmos, which in fact has no correspondence in reality.
By appropriating/referring to both astronomy and astrology, sky observation and future prospect, the Constellation project actually originates from maps, and most precisely from migration maps. By abstracting and translating migration paths into starring elements and golden threads, this project aims at the creation of a new cosmology, that of human beings forced to leave their countries and to face the uncertainly of an unknown path.
Like contemporary cosmonauts, with no other mythology than their own trace on time and space.

Cristiana de Marchi

Sustainability is a project that originates from a series of previous works dealing with issues of geography, borders and territorial definition with a main focus on the Arab World. After working on a series of monochrome maps, which highlighted in their delicacy the inscription of borders and their possible fluidity within specific contexts, I have moved my attention towards the shape of single Countries and their physical surfaces.
A reflection about the territorial impact of single nations engages considerations of roles, equilibrium and dynamics that necessarily extend beyond the closed limits of each single nation. A deeper look at the region also proves an interconnection between Arab Countries that is not only symbolized by super-national institutions, such as the Arab League, but that is deeply rooted in the cultural settings of these very same Countries. The re-composition of the regional landscape has therefore been contoured and redefined in the creation of a sculptural piece whose monumentality is also metaphoric.
Characterized by a strong sense of verticality, Sustainability integrates, combines and complements the individual countries into a true construction, where each and every component becomes relevant to the stability of the monument. Regardless of the differences in shape and extension, the superposition of all the Arab Countries on top of one another creates a solid and imposing structure that stands as a memento. The idea of support, of contiguity and of sustainability is impressed in the sculpture and becomes a visual reminder for the possibility of summative efforts in order to create a wider impact.

Cristiana de Marchi

Melting an ice block where the word FUTURE has been sculpted. The melting process parallels the slowness of future promises
As long as the shape is consistent the process of melting is hardly visible and the results of corruption are slowly increasing and can be hidden.
When the shape starts thinning and the appearance changes then the process accelerates and it shows how much and how far before the substance has been eroded from inside
By thinning, the letters become sharp, stick - like shaped, their substance disappears showing a bone, a melting core that sharpens like remnants of archaic animals unearthed in a far away future
In the end the remnants of the letters resemble nearly everything, a skyline of disappearance, a shadowed projection.
The change in the light also parallels the movement of the melting, from shiny morning into a shadowed evening light. As a metaphor of time passing and the collapse of hopes and promises
The remnants become a weird homage to postmodern societies, a trophy to in success and failure, an object invested of power and representation yet deprived of actual value.

Cristiana de Marchi

Melting an ice block where the word FUTURE has been sculpted. The melting process parallels the slowness of future promises
As long as the shape is consistent the process of melting is hardly visible and the results of corruption are slowly increasing and can be hidden.
When the shape starts thinning and the appearance changes then the process accelerates and it shows how much and how far before the substance has been eroded from inside
By thinning, the letters become sharp, stick - like shaped, their substance disappears showing a bone, a melting core that sharpens like remnants of archaic animals unearthed in a far away future
In the end the remnants of the letters resemble nearly everything, a skyline of disappearance, a shadowed projection.
The change in the light also parallels the movement of the melting, from shiny morning into a shadowed evening light. As a metaphor of time passing and the collapse of hopes and promises
The remnants become a weird homage to postmodern societies, a trophy to in success and failure, an object invested of power and representation yet deprived of actual value.

Cristiana de Marchi

In the Undoing series I use soap and water as a material, filming the process of alteration of the initial soaps into faded objects witnesses a change in status, an evolution and certainly an alteration of consistence.
The dissolving of “Memory” refers to its impermanence, to the constant shifts and transformations in both the individual and collective narration. The shrinking of the soaps symbolises the disappearance of tangency, the redefinition of spaces, the reshaping of narratives.
”Memory" is constantly moving, submitted to a continuous process of redefinition, with multiple stratifications and layering.
Soap dissolution into water symbolises the transformation, the change in perception, the altered consistency of our self-reference to the past, in the perspective of always renewed futures, through time.
"Memory" dissolves, gets dispersed, gaps are produced in the sequence of thought, in the circular repetition of the continuous revisiting of our past biography and history.

Cristiana de Marchi

The series focuses on the capital cities of the 22 Arab countries, through the use of a monochromatic restitution of their urban landscape. By adopting a technique that allows smooth transitions, the work focuses on the distinction between public and private spaces, a distinction that in its tenuousness ultimately raises issues of control and of systems of governance, particularly in a region where the definition of the private sphere is often overshadowed by that of public and power at large.

Cristiana de Marchi (born in Italy, lives and works in Beirut and Dubai) is an artist and a writer who explores (through performance, video, and installations of embroidered objects and tapestries) issues related to verbalization and translation, to the correspondence between physical and nominal dimensions. Some of her themes are the use of languages in propaganda, the transition between ‘territories’ and contexts and the redefinition of memory and identity. She was artist in residence at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia,USA. Her work has been shown in India, Italy, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Spain, UK, UAE and USA.

Cristiana de Marchi’s work is minimalist in its essence. During the past few years she has been intensively working on embroideries using a variety of easily accessible objects and materials, which we deal with on a daily basis including kitchen utensils, light home furnishings and aliments.

This long term and ongoing project originated from her interest in words and their translation and in the correspondence between physical and nominal dimensions, between actions and wording.

Her other recent projects focus on the controversial territory of language and messages of propaganda, in this case supported by a clear manipulative purpose; and on the theme of identity, treated by the artist from an ironic, acute and yet witty perspective.

Performances and videos constitute the other direction of de Marchi’s research, investigating the line between phrasing and acting, between the aura recognized in the former and the obviousness and self-evidence of the latter.

Whereas the use of words is regulated by the contradictory and conventional reference to a set system of cultural (in the wider sense) rules, the use of the body eludes these rules, placing the communication on a hyper-real level and involving a fluid combination of both verbal and non- verbal languages.